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Public Engagement: Beautifully messy

By Imagining America | September 14, 2016

By LB Hannahs, a Ph.D. student in Higher Education Administration at the University of Florida and a 2016–2017 Publicly Active Graduate Education (PAGE) Fellow. This PAGE Blog Salon explores themes of intersectionality and public scholarship, important topics of the upcoming Imagining America national conference, Oct. 6-8, 2016, in Milwaukee, WI.

Public engagement and scholarship is the work of addressing the very real, and sometimes very messy, parts of the human experience. The notion of success and failure sets up a false dichotomy that doesn’t recognize that any endeavor aiming to address a human issue must be allowed to exist in the messy overlap of success and failure. There is rarely going to be a cut and dry capture of success, because often this works comes at the cost of something, or someone, else. The successful engagement of public scholarship requires an acknowledgement of this, while challenging the academy’s oversimplification of success. This oversimplification often comes at the expense of those we are serving. Successful public engagement is constantly trying to address those complexities of life with the utmost care and responsibility to those most marginalized, while simultaneously negotiating the privilege we have as scholars. By studying strategic diversity plans and organizational decision-making, my research attempts to better understand administrative and institutional approaches to diversity initiatives. I hope to contribute to the body of work developing policy and practices to make deep change for historically marginalized people on college campuses.

In my former professional position, as Director of LGBT Affairs at the University of Florida, I had the privilege of being in a job that required me to evaluate my positionality on a daily basis. I am a white, trans-masculine genderqueer, blue-collar born but transitioning to middle class, queer, able-bodied, documented US citizen, and a new parent. I am all of those identities wherever I go and they shape how I physically, emotionally, and intellectually show up in the world. Being super conscious of these identities and the way I exist in the world has made these last two years as a part-time student a very lonely journey. I know as a white, trans-masculine presenting person I am given legitimacy and credibility that a colleague of color who is trans-feminine would not be given. I also know that because my personal is political, my personal is professional. While this enmeshment of identity is challenging, it opens up the opportunity for authenticity and vulnerability as part of my professional life.

For the past five years I have been building relationships and support systems, developing curriculum and workshops, and advocating for underrepresented students as a diversity professional and social justice educator. I am immensely proud of this work, but there is a strong pull to collaborate and be part of an organization like Imagining America, I believe it’s what I need to challenge me to be a better advocate, a better change agent. I am humbled to be a PAGE scholar and am eager for this experience to help me develop as a scholar, practitioner, and as a person.

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Comments

LB Hannahs, I really appreciate the point you make about success and failure in what you call “the academy’s oversimplification of success”. The effects this harsh dichotomy has, not only on those who serve but on those who are being shaped by academics, resonates with me. As a graduate student in literary studies I have constantly been exposed to the narrative of success in academia, which consists of getting tenure, publishing for the small cohort of professionals who read your research, and…that’s it! In the humanities anything that falls out of that narrow understanding of a successful career for doctoral students, it’s devalued and dismissed. This, of course, has terrible consequences for students who wish to do work outside of the academy and to those who, given the state of the job market, wish to get tenure but never will. This is one of the reasons advocating for public scholarship is so crucial because it opens up the possibility of redefining stagnant ideas: How do we define academic work? And, most importantly, what does it mean to succeed or to fail in academia?

LB,
Your post has brought a great deal of self-reflections around this false dichotomy and the ways in which it may have prevented me from addressing and embracing these complexities. It made me think about the ways in which outcomes/results can become a priority and lose sight of the collaboration/process within academia—especially when research/funding is connected to that work. I am currently working on an engaged scholarship project with Dr. Gretchen Lopez (whom speaks highly of you) through a high school/university partnership, and negotiating my privilege as a scholar becomes critical to this work (as you have indicated in your post). Thank you for your post and I look forward to this collaborative journey